07-Jun-14

Liberty Triumphant Over A Dead Cow? Treasures From The Yeltsin Center

The New York Times reports another outbreak of American style presidentialish-ness, this time in the wilds of Russia.

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center looms over Yekaterinburg, where young Boris began his climb of the greasy Communist pole. His previous boosts to local history include destroying the building where the Bolsheviks killed the Russian royal family.

Boris is going to get the full American cheese plate, with stirring versions of his “compelling personal story” and a reproduction of his tank-standing posture in the events leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Tanks for the Memories

Tank-adjacent events apparently not to be marked include his killing hundreds while shelling the Parliament which had impeached him. Americans still basking in the afterglow of Saint Ronnie’s miracle victory over Communism may not recall that in the aftermath of Parliament’s defeat Yeltsin rewrote the constitution removing any limits on Presidential power, enjoyed two genocidal wars in Chechnya and elevated the obscure Vladimir Putin to greatness. While looting the economy.

Visitors will thrill to a recreation [“not a replica” the Times stresses] of his presidential office, featuring the actual furniture.

19-Jan-08

The New Home of Swank

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s property manager has announced a new St. Petersburg location for the Presidential Library.

The Library will move from the Senate building to the Synod building. “Before the end of next year we will open the library’s representative office here – but this is going to be the first stage. The works will continue,” Vladimir Kozhin told Tass.

16-Jan-08

Vlad Putin fans are pulling themselves together, bereft at his looming departure from the Russian Presidency, if not from power. The answer for keeping a polish on his ever shining star? A western import classic, the Presidential Library. If the bill passes, and it’s larded up with Putin allies, Putin, Yeltsin, and their successors will get state funded visitor centers of grandeur to commemorate their fab-ness.

As sponsor Mikhail Starshinov told Reuters, “State leaders are immortalised in one form or another in many civilised countries.”

10-Jan-08

“Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in American policy, but not as wrong as it will go now. As in 1980, a lame-duck administration will confront economic and strategic reverses. But it is worse than 1980, for no Ronald Reagan is waiting in the wings to set things right. “

And sends forth the call for the smack of firm government:

“Vladimir Putin, the most talented political leader of our time: what might he have done at the helm of the world’s only superpower, instead of salvaging the hulk of the defeated Soviet Empire? Why not give him the chance? Watching the last round of American political debates, it occurred to me that it’s time to think out of the box…Putin will finish his second term of office as Russian president early in 2008, just when the next American president takes office. There is plenty of time to naturalize him as an American citizenand amend the constitution to permit a foreign-born president. The alternative is to elect another incarnation of the political type that got America into trouble in the first place. “